Running it: phones, opening and closing
The buttons that move a show through its life, and the list of phones trading on it.
Connect your phones — before you leave
Connect a phone or tablet puts a QR code on screen. Scan it with the device that will sell. Do this at the shop, on your own wifi, not in the car park: a connected phone stays connected, so everything is ready before you set off.
The code lasts 3 minutes and connects one device — press the button again for the next phone. There is no limit on how many you connect.
A connected phone can sell and buy for this show and nothing else. It cannot reach your admin, your reports or your settings, so handing one to a helper for the weekend hands over nothing else. Each arrives named Device 1, Device 2 and so on in the order they join, and the ledger records which one processed what. Rename them after the tablet or the person carrying it — "iPad", "John's phone" — type over the name and press Save, and the takings breakdown reads like your team.
Give each one a PIN. Type six digits and press Set PIN, or leave the box blank and press it for a random one. It is shown once — write it down, it is not shown again. If a phone is ever logged out at the show it asks for its PIN instead of needing the QR code again, so keep the PINs with you.
Once connected, the till can be put on the phone's home screen like an app: open the browser's menu and choose Add to Home Screen (iPhone) or Install app (Android). It opens full-screen with the shop's own logo as its icon, with no address bar to catch a thumb, and it is the same till — nothing separate to set up. On an iPhone or iPad the home-screen copy keeps its own sign-in, so the first time it opens it says Connect this device: press Scan the connect code there and point it at the QR on this page — the phone's own camera app would only open the code in Safari.
The phone inherits the staff account of whoever generated the code, and that account needs the Sell and buy at a show from a paired device permission, or the code is refused when it is scanned. So connect each helper's phone while signed in as them, and the ledger names the right person.
This is nothing to do with the card reader, which is set on its own tab. The reader takes the money; these are the phones that run the selling app.
| Connected | When that phone scanned its code |
|---|---|
| Last seen | When it last did anything — a quiet phone at a busy show is worth a look |
A closed show will not accept any more phones.
Mark it open
Only a label. The first sale or buy-in opens the show by itself, so you never have to remember this button — it is there for when you want the status to read Open before trading starts.
Delete
Only offered while the show is still a draft, for a show that turned out not to be happening. It puts every picked item back into website stock on the way out. Once a show has traded it can never be deleted — it has money in it.
Close & bring stock back
The button you press when you get home. It returns everything still in the box to website stock — what you took and did not sell, and everything you bought over the table — and releases the card reader back to its till. It tells you how many items came back.
Cards you bought in arrive as ordinary stock with a cost price already recorded, so the profit is right when they sell. Graded slabs come back without a picture. Open the item under Products and save its grading details there: an ACE certificate fetches front and back automatically, and PSA, BGS and CGC need a photo adding yourself.
If Count this show's takings in my sales figures is ticked on Set up, closing also posts the show's sales to your books, and the message says how many.
Post takings to my books
Closing posts the sales for you. This button stays for anything that arrives later, such as a phone that was offline and catches up after you closed. It writes each remaining sale into your orders so it lands in Reports, VAT and the dashboard, and tells you how many were posted.
It is safe to press twice — anything already posted is skipped, and the date it was done shows here afterwards. A sale that has been posted can no longer be undone on the phone: it is in your books now.
Each sale is posted on the day and time it was made, not the day it was posted. If that falls in a VAT period that has already ended, the message and this tab name the period. If you have already filed that return, the sale is missing from it: correct it on your next return, under HMRC's error-correction rules. The VAT report for that period lists each of these sales under Sales added after this period ended.